Image Credit: BETThe tumultuous road that has led to a seemingly sunny future for BET’s saved-from-the-grave sitcom, The Game, has been full of lessons for star and former Sister, Sister actress Tia Mowry Hardrict. The biggest of all? The overwhelming value of a second chance in Hollywood.

“Blessed,” Mowry said when describing her feelings about coming back for a 13-episode season almost two years after being canceled by the CW – something the actress said she could see coming.

“Production costs were getting cut. We weren’t getting any advertisement, no media attention. I had prepared myself,” she said of the weeks leading up to the show’s axing in 2009. “We never felt like we were in the can. We were always extremely stressed. We felt like we could never be extremely creative. We never felt like the network got us.”

Flash forward to present day. Mowry had kept busy in the time between the show’s untimely cancellation and its eventual pick-up by BET by mostly working alongside her sister Tamera on movie projects and filming Tia and Tamera Take Two for the Style Network. But now she’s celebrating the 7.7 million viewers who tuned into the show’s season premiere, enjoying being with the cast once again (Mowry says they are “very close” after having “gone through a lot with each other”), and is pregnant with her first child. (In fact, she points out you can expect to see her in many “cute, flowy clothes” toward the end of The Game’s current season because she was 2 months pregnant at the time they filmed.)

“Having a second chance makes you want to work even harder,” she said. “That second chance, makes you feel confident, at peace, and feel loved. They see something in [the show] – potential.”